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  • Agenda item
  • Agenda item

    Claire Ray (Head of Service, Education Safeguarding service, Kent County Council) and Claire Ledger (South Kent Area Safeguarding Adviser, Kent County Council)

    Minutes:

    Claire Ray (Head of Service – Education Safeguarding) and Claire Ledger (Area Safeguarding Advisor – South Kent) were in attendance.

     

    (1)  The Chairman welcomed the guests to the Committee.

     

    (2)  Ms Ray and Mrs Ledger introduced themselves to the Committee and briefly talked about the work of The Education Safeguarding Service.

     

    (3)  Ms Ray and Mrs Ledger presented a series of slides to the Committee, which covered the following key points:

     

    ·         The background and role of The Education Safeguarding Service, including the duties and tasks undertaken by the service on behalf of Kent County Council and the services which could be commissioned directly by schools, including training.

    ·         Statutory safeguarding responsibilities, Statutory and Non-Statutory guidance for schools and Early Years settings.

    ·         How safeguarding support was provided to schools in Kent.

    ·         Multi-agency working.

    ·         The effective initiatives and strategies.

    ·         What Kent County Council could do to support safeguarding activities.

    ·         The challenges that schools in Kent were faced with in relation to safeguarding issues.

    ·         The importance of recognising and understanding risks and responding to concerns relating to safeguarding.

    (4)  Referring to the enablement of a ‘safe space’ within schools to discuss issues

    Ms Ray said that the reference to a safe space within the presentation related to multiagency working and for all of those who were working with children and their families to feel confident in clarifying issues and asking questions without fear of being criticised. Mrs Ledger said that it was important for professionals to feel comfortable when discussing challenging issues such as knife crime and this was something the Education Safeguarding Service provided with schools feeling able to pick up the phone to ask questions in relation to any safeguarding issue, including knife crime.

     

    (5)  What are the emerging themes in relation to the Safeguarding training undertaken within schools and why does the service not specifically focus on knife crime?

    Ms Ray said that the Safeguarding training provided to schools by The Education Safeguarding Service covered a range of different topics such as gang-related crime, the use of weapons etc, there was no training that focused specifically on knife crime as an independent issue. She added that The Education Safeguarding Service offered conferences with a variety of presentations which explored the vulnerabilities of children and young people including extremism and gang culture, it was important that the vulnerabilities that affected children were seen holistically rather than each issue being addressed separately. It was also noted that schools were under no obligation to use training provided by the service, although in reality most did.

     

    In relation to the levels of knife crime in Kent County Council,Mrs Ledger said that the Education Safeguarding Service were aware of data collated by UK Police forces on incidents of knife crime and believed that in comparison, to other areas of the UK, incidents that involved Kent children were relatively low. She emphasised the importance of ensuring that all staff with schools were trained on safeguarding issues which included increasing the awareness of knife crime. Mrs Ledger and Ms Ray also identified a lack of research in relation to knife related incidents in Kent schools, including how schools address issues.

     

    (6)  Have there been many knife crime related incidents within schools in Kent over recent years?

    Ms Ray said that most of the cases the Education Safeguarding Service had dealt with were where students had brought a knife into school related to self-harm issues as opposed to wishing to cause harm to others. She added that there had been very few calls to the service concerning knives being brought into schools as weapons, although in such instances, The Education Safeguarding Service advised schools to contact the police or social services as appropriate. Mrs Ledger said that some schools did not always feel a need to contact The Education Safeguarding Service as they felt confident in dealing with issues by themselves and were already well supported by other agencies. The Education Safeguarding Service were working hard with colleagues in other agencies to improve multiagency working, including identifying training needs.

     

    (7)  An observation was made by members that some teachers do not like talking about knife crime.  

    Ms Ray said that schools may be reluctant to have policies or training on the matter as they felt it would reflect badly on the school and make parents believe there was a specific problem, rather than it being a preventative measure. She related this to how anti-bullying policies were seen by some schools many years ago.

     

    (8)  The lead up to knife crime can come at a very early age, often related to families and home-life.

    a)    In relation to the high volume of school exclusions, what work is being undertaken to ensure that the amount of school exclusions starts to reduce?

    Ms Ray said that whilst she was aware of Member’s concerns in relation to school exclusions, the Education Safeguarding Service were not involved in school exclusions, they were monitored by another team within Kent County Council’s Education department.

     

    Mrs Ledger discussed the positive work undertaken by schools with the support of Kent County Council’s attendance and inclusion service to maintain the focus on inclusion, as opposed to exclusion. Mrs Ledger also regularly attended multi-agency meetings in order to keep abreast of the issues surrounding inclusion and attendance and in addition to this, met regularly with the service tasked  with making sure that all children had access to suitable levels of education and were safe. She added that she had also attended meetings relating to potential exclusions and had provided support and advice. She emphasised the importance of taking a cohesive approach to difficult situations, formulating individual plans for challenging students and identifying and meeting specific needs.

     

    b)     In relation to Elective Home Education (EHE), what work is being undertaken to ensure that children are safe?

    Ms Ray expressed her views on EHE and said that whilst some children were educated appropriately, it was difficult to ensure the safety of all children who were electively home educated. She talked about the serious case review process in Kent and how the parents education was considered, including whether they had been EHE. She added that she worked closely with Kent County Council’s EHE team to ensure that they regularly received safeguarding training and were confident in dealing with safeguarding issues.

     

    (9)  How has the service changed by becoming a commissioned service?

    Ms Ray said that the Education Safeguarding Service had been a commissioned service for the past six years, prior to moving into The Education People in September 2018. Therefore, it was not that different, apart from having more freedom to consider other areas of work, including with different authorities.  

     

    (10)       The Chairman thanked the members of The Education Safeguarding Service for attending and answering Members questions. He invited them to submit written evidence in support of the Select Committee’s work.

    Supporting documents: